[TriLUG] Semi OT - phishing emails and spoofed domain links

Matt Flyer via TriLUG trilug at trilug.org
Wed Jul 19 16:37:51 EDT 2017


Yesterday I received a phishing email, one of a pattern where someone
is trying to gain credentials and possibly other information by trying
to get you to click on a link and enter your account information.
 Typically, if you hover over it, the links direct you to a page on
some hosted system somewhere.  I have been engaging in a practice of
trying to make it more difficult for these "jokers" by reporting them
to the hosting provider as a TOS violation.  I have gotten a couple of
these sites taken down and the users banned.  

It appears that they've gotten a little more creative and are somehow
spoofing the links.  For example, I got one yesterday that when you
hover over it shows the link "upgradeaccount.sitey.me", further digging
shows this resolves to the IP address of 107.178.211.45, which it turns
out is NOT a server that belongs to sitey.me / sitey.com.  Performing a
reverse DNS on this shows it potentially belonging to "google domains".

I have heard about ways of using 'codes' to spoof the addresses that
are shown in websites and I assume that something similar is going on
here.  Unfortunately, I seem to have hit a potential dead end in
looking this one up.  Looking at the email headers shows that it may
have originated from swosu.edu (SW Oklahoma State Univ) but then it
stayed in the "outlook.office365" system with valid SPF and everything,
which could mean that some idiot was dumb enough to actually be phished
and their account is now originating spam.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to get at the real domain that
they seem to be trying to redirect to so that I could hopefully report
them and cause them more angst?




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